


All that could've been

by RLNobbe



Series: The Future Doctor [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 20th Century, 21st Century, Clocks, Crash Landing, Future, Gen, Kidnapping, Post-regeneration, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RLNobbe/pseuds/RLNobbe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has just regenerated, it has been so many time that he has forgotten which time it was, but something seems odd about the earth he just crash landed on, as if the echoes of a supposedly long gone foe, bred and used in the time war, still wander around this place as if it could pop up any second. To prevent all of reality from collapsing once more, the Doctor must team up with a very reluctant companion and a friend from the past to prevent a horror from the past, all the while dealing with signs from the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Scarf

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a lot of tiny references to older incarnations, tv-shows and modern pop-culture in general, I've tried to make the writing style a bit Adamsian, with a big smudge of my own style mixed in with it. Later chapters will be posted weekly, as the chapter length of the first four chapters is quite on the short side, comments will be appreciated.

His hands were still tad warm from the regeneration, as if they touched a kettle not that long ago. His eyes tingled, as if someone or something horrible ripped them out and put new ones in, just for old time sake. His breath was throaty, his hearts beating hard and out of rhythm, like the inventor of the tin ear used his hearts as a surrogate for a reasonable drum kit. His clothes were too tight and too short, his body expanded way more than expected. Frankly, he felt embarrassed being dressed in these rags. In short, the Doctor felt horrible. Not the waking up at six in the morning because your neighbours are a noisy bunch kind of horrible, but exceptionally horrible, a level of horribleness seldom achieved.   
He bent his fingers, a searing pain travelled through him as he did so, almost forcing him to just lie down on the floor and sob it out or something similar. Sadly he didn’t get a chance to, because a thumping bell rang in his ear, alerting him to imminent danger. In a moment that would later be attributed to his brain not being completely regenerated he pushed open door of his good old Tardis, causing his wonky legs to have regrets about being used and almost flinging the poor Timelord out of his cosy home. 

Immediately gaining some sense of consciousness, his hand grabbed and flailed around until they grabbed something that slightly resembled something solid. He held on to it for his dear lives as he tumbled down even more, a cold, harsh wind soaring past his barely functioning ears as he grips onto the object as tight as he possibly could, his eyes tightly shut. A sudden noise that could only be described as a thump echoed through the skies as the curious eyes of the even more curious Doctor opened his eyes. His eyes gazed upon a ridiculously long scarf, assembled from a ragtag band of colours, as if a rainbow stayed up late, wrapped snugly around a hat stand which blocked the shaggy doors of his Tardis. A smile crept over his face as he shouted:  
‘’You’re bloody magnificent, just bloody magnificent!’’ the sound of his voice frightening the living hell out of the small critters inhabiting the tiny forest below. Feeling particularly brave, his hand snuck into his jacket and he pulled his trustworthy sonic screwdriver from it. He pointed the curious device at his old Tardis and pushed the button, a bright light emanating from it as he did so. 

‘’Come on you bloody bastard, come on!’’ he hissed between his teeth as he clamped the life-saving scarf with one arm. A sudden shiver and shake of the Tardis put the man off balance, his sonic being flung from his hand somewhere into the abandoned moor below, before a reasonably understandable outcry of sadness could be uttered, the poor man falls down even more, his fingers barely grasping onto the loose tousles decorating the scarf.   
‘’For crying out loud!’’ he shouted, his feet grazing and to some extent decapitating some of the trees dotted around the forest. He crept up his legs against his chest, hoping not to make a particularly nasty and embarrassing fall down a couple of spurs and between the lunches of several squirrels and the odd rabbit. The wool of his scarf slowly burns his fingers as he keeps losing grip, his face growing more red by the moment as if looking constipated at this moment might save his life. The forest ended as abruptly as it started, its treefullness and obvious pointiness being replaced by lush, unkempt grass, only disturbed by a daffodil every few metres or so. He opened his eyes for a brief moment, gazing down at the lush greenness beneath him, his hearts beating as fast as one of those trains that go really fast too.  
He took a deep breath, holding the soft wool for the last few seconds.  
‘’No regrets, no tears, no anxieties’’ He opened his hands and fell, his body crashing into the soft grass as the only thing he saw was black and the sound of a crashing blue box resonated in the background.


	2. The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl bumps into a blue wooden box.

‘’What do you mean you don’t like me anymore?’’ she mouthed angrily through her phone while riding her oddly unstable bike over an oddly bad maintained road. An odd displacement of noises from her phone, that could only be described as feeble attempts to justify the initiated break up with her, resonate from her phone as her eyes are slowly filled with a completely understandable feeling of mild rage and irritation.   
‘’Well you can just go back to your home in Thicktown then!’’ she shouted angrily, before throwing her phone somewhere in a bit of shrubbery, letting the poor thing die out there on its own while invoking the curiosity of the local fauna over years to come. She pedals hard on her bike, the gravel crunching underneath the rubber of her wheels as she rides towards her home, which is still a considerable distance away. A distance considerable enough to encourage the masses to take the bus. She however, is not part of the masses. She’s too kooky for that, too weird. It is not that unusual for her to just throw her bike on the side of the road on occasions, allowing her to get her paper and pencil from her bag and write, or draw, or chew on the pencil while staring blankly at the paper for extended periods of time.  
The sweet wind wafts through her hair, her hair that could only be described as very impulsively, since it tends to be dyed over every month or so, but being dyed a dark reddish hue for now. Her eyes returned to their natural colour, the colour of the calm blue sea they are so often compared with by men who have nothing in their mind but bad intentions and a very distorted image of reality. She closed her eyes while continuing along the road, her mind leading her down the path she has taken so many times before. The twittering of the birds played a soft melody in her mind, accompanied by gentle breeze navigating through the rustling leaves of many, many trees. To top it all off the symphony of the nature is the underlining of a rhythm thudding over the fields, a thudding sound that one could only describe as a thumping bell.

Her eyes opened wide as the sudden realization of the odd one out in this symphony fell over her. She quickly pulled her not all too reliable brakes and stopped, giving her eyes the time to look around the countryside, hoping to find the origin of this otherworldly sound. She gets off her bike, leaving it unlocked on the path, which is one of the reasons this is the seventh bike this year, since the other six were stolen by people who have an enormous craving for bikes. She quickly scurries down the field in the direction the thumping bell is coming from, her footsteps treading quick and light across the grass. She runs over fields and through patches of trees to small to be called proper forests, as if the bell is beckoning her, as if it is a scream for help. The sound turns louder and louder as she scuttles up a hill, her jeans and hands dirty from an assortment of trees and grass. Her eyes widen as she sees the origin of the thumping bell, a bruised and battered police box, tilted and half-buried inside the ground, the grass in front of it completely dug out, her eye catches a long line of colours lying in front of the box, almost like a scarf it seems. Her eyes follow the vivid train of colours until she makes an audible gasp as she sees a man face down in the grass, his clothes ragged and tiny, his body silent and unmoving. Overcome by a bravery she cannot quite place, she walks up to the body, hoping it is still alive.


	3. The Blue Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A first encounter with the Tardis that does not go as expected.

He feels a gentle prod against his shoulder as he slowly awakens, his mouth filled with grass and dirt, his body feeling sore all over.   
‘’Sir, are you okay?’’ he hears a voice say. He feels his hearts gently beating in his chest as he recalls what happened, his brain quickly putting the pieces of the puzzle together. He feels another gentle prod against him.  
‘’Sir?’’ he hears the voice say again. Agitated he suddenly jumps up with the agility of a man one hundredth his age. The girl who the voice logically belongs to scares up, shrieks and falls back into the grass.  
‘’I am doing quite fine, quite bloody fine if you ask me, no need to prod me at all. I was just taking a nap.’’ He turns around quickly, is lanky frame going along easily as his eyes tries to find the girl the voice belongs to.   
‘’Ah, the prodding lady I presume?’’ he says to her, extending his hand in what must be a friendly gesture, the sleeve of his ruffled jacket almost reaching up to his elbow.  
‘’P-prodding lady?’’ she repeats confused, squinting her eyes as if trying to remember the name of the artist who performed that one song pretty decently.  
‘’Yes, the prodding lady, the lady who prods people, napping people in particular.’’ He replies, still extending his arm.  
‘’A nasty bloody habit if you ask me, I mean, what if I was really close to solving the equation of Kasterborous?’’ his fingers bend a little while his lips mouth some word, as if his mind just put on a thinking cap.

‘’No, not close to solving that bloody equation at all. Anyhow, manners. Your name please?’’ his eyes look at her with a certain sense of urgency.   
‘’Excuse me?’’ she answers, a certain look of discontent appearing on her face, seeing the man whose life she tried to save turned out to be a particularly rude one.  
‘’I am not telling you anything’’ she says while standing up, avoiding the confused looks from the man opposite of her.  
‘’Don’t you have a name? Is that a new thing?’’ his eyes squinting, hoping to remember what he forgot while she stands up and walks away from the man. Suddenly a headache falls over him, sending him flailing about and grabbing for his hair as he cringes loudly.  
‘’Bloody brain!’’ he shouts, the girl having turned around, secretly hoping the rude man is in an awful lot of pain. And as if thunder strikes from a clear sky his eyes suddenly show a certain brightness.   
‘’Of course!’’ he shouts, a bright smile creeping across his face covered with streaks of mud and a few blades of grass. The girl raising an eyebrow to him as he jumps up and down with an almost unexplainable enthusiasm. He extends his hand again, his long arm stretching from his lanky body.   
‘’Come on, shake it.’’ He states smiling. Reluctantly the girl extends her hand, gently grabbing his. Before she can even fathom why exactly she is shaking an absolute strangers hand he starts shaking her hand up and down wildly, like he’s a living, sentient water pump with a strange preference for clothes that are too small.  
‘’I’m the Doctor!’’ he exclaims as if he has recently discovered a recipe what will make him extraordinarily rich within a very small amount of time.   
‘’Doctor who?’’ she asks, pulling her hand away from his.   
‘’Hahaha’’ he exclaims loudly, up until now the only time someone has ever exclaimed the phrase hahaha loudly, while jumping through the field with a surprising agility while almost singing.

‘’If I got a pound every time someone asked that’’ he makes a big leap and stops right in front of her. Smiling broadly down at her, with a happiness that can only be explained as childlike.  
‘’Just the Doctor, darling.’’ Her eyes fill with anger as he slaps the Doctor in his face, promptly letting the poor fellow almost fall over.  
‘’No one calls me darling.’’ She says angrily. ‘’No one’’ she repeats while pointing at the startled Doctor. She gives him one last look before she turns around and walks away with relatively big steps.   
‘’Wait!’’ he shouts after her. She stops, blood drawing away from her knuckles as she makes fists of her hands.  
‘’I didn’t show you my home yet!’’ she turns around, looking at the odd man flailing his arms around and pointing at the police box not more than twenty yards away from him. Taking her standstill as a yes, the Doctor uses a cross between running and jumping to get to the girl, before stopping right in front of her, seemingly exhausted.  
‘’New legs, always difficult’’ he says, pointing down at the bony limbs, covered by pants which barely cover his knees. 

‘’Glad I still have them though, my nephew lost them, got this icky tentacle-bug-walking-slime-thingy in return, not pretty’’ he adds, wearing a disgusted look on his head. Before she even has the chance to respond, the kooky Doctor grabs her arm and pulls her with him.  
‘’What are you doing! Let go of me!’’ the girl shouts as the Doctor pulls her with him towards the battered police box.   
‘’There you go, my home!’’ he exclaims happily, opening the door and pushing her in. She screams as she closes her eyes and braces herself for impact. Standing still for at least four Zarbian seconds, which are about eighteen Sontar-secs, which are about seven or eight Earth-seconds, depending on Jupiter’s disposition towards the Sun and Venus, she opens one eye slowly, still being afraid of being promptly hit by a slab of wood in the face. Instead of finding a wooden wall she finds a very spacious room, reminding her of the Victorian era, including the overly decorated chair, the fireplace and the big console in the middle of the room containing a lot of buttons, switches, random items, numbers and letters and a big, glass tube in the middle of it, emanating a strange, green light and a low humming sound.   
‘’I know, bloody lovely isn’t it?’’ the Doctor states matter-of-factly while leaning against the console. The girls mouth forms a form slightly resembling the letter O as she storms out the door, running around the police box, feeling the wooden panels and quickly coming to the conclusion she should run away really, really fast. Peeking his head outside the door, awaiting the girls’ reaction, the Doctor can just make out the blur which appears to be her passing by him. His eyes widen in surprise when he sees her run away as fast as she can, his mind almost baffled.

‘’You’re supposed to say it’s bigger on the inside! This is not how it goes!’’ he screams after her, still standing in the opening of his trustworthy Tardis, waiting until she’s nothing more than a rather strange looking dot on the horizon.   
‘’Bloody humans, it’s not your fault’’ he says to the police box, gently petting her door panel.   
He closes the door behind him, running up to the console and bashing buttons and objects in a random order, one of these objects being a bellow which has to be blown exactly three times. The Tardis starts humming a deep sound, sounding like a key dragged across a piano string, the sound invoking a wicked smile on the Doctors face.   
‘’I can’t wait ‘till she sees what this baby still has in her.’’


	4. The Creature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ancient evil not quite dead.

It was supposed to be locked up for ever, hidden deep within the bowels of Gallifrey where it belonged. It stayed put there, being surrounded by nothing more than a crippling loneliness and a calm mind. It was the one that was never supposed to be, a perversity of Timelord biology, an insane idea come to life. But as soon as the Last Great Time War razed over the surface of Gallifrey it ran, it ran as fast as it could, armies of Meanwhiles and Neverweres following his every command, even the disgusting Horde of Travesties chose his side. They were the third faction, the one they never mentioned because they were the most horrible, more horrible than Davros of of Skaro, more cruel than the Master of Gallifrey.

But everything changed as thirteen blue Tardii circled the planet, their work sending the creature off into space, never to return again. Overcome by a pain not known by any mortal being it soared through time and space, screaming, crying and falling into nothing and everything at once. It existed as it didn’t exist, it felt when there weren’t any hands, it saw where there weren’t any eyes and it spoke when there were no words to be spoken. So it hurtled through time and space, ejected from its long forgotten prison, his armies murdered and his home devoured. It is neither death nor life, love nor hate, cruelty nor mercy. A final shout raged through the skies as the being fell towards a green and blue planet, hoping the impact would mercifully end this state it was or wasn’t in. It closed its eyes as it hurtles towards the planet, the skin covering his existent or non-existent body burning as it landed into a deep, blue sea. It closed its eyes wearily and slept while being awake, for hundreds of thousands of years. Continents shifted in its slumber, tribes were settled, a fire was kindled and some guy even found out that wheels are pretty convenient. So it continued its very long slumber, civilizations were built and collapsed just as easily, people became quite cross with each other if some of them threw tea into the sea. Later on they got even more cross with each other, even going so far as to build a considerably large wall and not talk to each other for a extended period of time. After a while it decided to wake up from its slumber, it sped from the ocean and up into the sky, taking several large islands in its wake and causing quite a stir amongst the local population as they saw their belongings and homes drift slowly through the street. And in the sky it waited, contemplated, thought and oversaw. 

A young man caught his eye. He looked dashing, vigorous and ready to take on the world, not at all like the creature, a monster devoured by his own knowledge. It pelted down on the young man, invading his mind, the tendrils of its being destroying and replacing his emotions, memories and knowledge, the body almost breaking under the sheer burden of the creature. But it survived, it pulled through. The man fell on his knees screaming as the being and he became one, feeling every memory in his head burn inside his eyes, every decision that was never made embedded on his corneas for all eternity and one sole though occupying his mind. The downfall of the man who brought this onto him, who made him feel the pain he feels, who helped everyone but let him suffer in his tragedies. He opens his mouth uneasy, not being used to having a physical body, exhausted the being utters its last words as the man utters his first.  
‘’I must kill the Doctor.’’


	5. The Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why a Tardis and a cup of tea don't mix.

She ran as fast as her feet could carry her, her head still trying to wrap itself over the blue box she got pushed in.  
‘’It can’t be, it’s bigger on the inside!’’ the whimpers between breaths as she leaps over branches laying on the forest floor, trying not to trip over her and have a mouthful of leaves and dirt as dinner. As soon as it’s possible she veers out of the forest and unto the dirt road, her rusty bike standing there, a bit like the old man on the corner who always seems to have another story up his sleeve that no one will ever understand. As she runs towards a bike a strange humming sound finds its way to her ear. She sees a light bluish hue appear in front of her bike, but that must be her eyes fidgeting with her mind. She runs even faster towards her metal steed, not paying attention at all towards the very bad maintained road, causing her to fall over and trip right into the blue hue, screaming she opens her eyes, seeing an all too familiar interior and an all too familiar kooky man standing over her, hands on his back, looking at her with a distinguished look of curiosity on his face.’  
‘’You’re quite the runner aren’t you?’’ he proclaims, tilting his head to the side, as if he is a dog who doesn’t have the slightest clue of what’s going on.  
‘’Also, would you mind not screaming and falling over every single time you enter my Tardis? It’s considered very rude to enter someone’s home like that.’’  
Her big blue eyes are the size of Dalek-saucers when she stands up, the Doctor still observing her patiently as she backs up towards the door, not breaking eye contact with him. Her shaking hands find the doorknob and try to turn it, but it’s as locked as a really big vault with really valuable things stashed away in it.

‘’Trying to leave?’’ he asks, with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.  
‘’I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.’’ He adds while calmly walking towards a very odd looking stove with a bunch of things attached to it that are used for stuff.   
‘’You’re insane, you’re an insane psychopath!‘‘ she screams to him while still clutching the brass doorknob in her hand, hoping it’ll suddenly open the door if she twists it for the umpteenth time.  
‘’You call me insane’’ he responds calmly while pouring two cups of tea   
‘’But yet you’re the one twisting my obviously locked doorknob a very large amount of times.’’ He gently sets down the last cup on a very richly decorated and very old table before walking over to her. He looks down to her with a look of pity on his face. He squints his eyes before lightly smiling and snapping his fingers.  
‘’Go on, open the door. Be warned though, you might not like it’’ He says with a devious grin on his face.

Her tear filled eyes look up at him with a mix of shock and disgust, as if he had just done something really dirty, like eating a thing that was really slimy and covered in hairs, a snotty moustache if you will. Her hand slowly twists the doorknob, the doorknob making light clicking noises in response. Her eyes don’t move away from him as she slowly pushes the door open.  
‘’So long crazy man’’ she says in an angry voice before pushing the door open and falling into deep space. The Doctor quickly grabs her hand, letting her dangle out of the door before pulling her back into the Tardis again.   
‘’Don’t do that again, I don’t want to lose another friend because he or she fell.’’ He straightens his completely ruined jacket, as if it makes any difference, before he continues talking.  
‘’Well, he did come back, silly old man with his black coat and his funny name. I should visit him sometime.’’  
The girls eyes are still enormous, her mouth wide open as she tries to process what she just saw.  
‘’Tha-that was space!’’ she exclaims, only just being able to move her mouth.  
The Doctor, who’s already engulfed in hitting the most random of buttons on his console doesn’t even look up while he responds.  
‘’You have a firm grasp of the obvious my dear.’’ He walks over to the table and picks up the cup of tea.  
‘’Would you like a cup of tea? It has to be five ‘o clock somewhere.’’  
The girl shakes her head lightly as she starts to sob lightly, almost unnoticeably. The Doctor slowly walks over to her and sets the tea down next to her.  
‘’Never decline tea when offered, it's impolite and that's how wars start.’’ He says while walking back to his console, somehow enjoying the buzzing sound the engine makes.  
‘’What’s the matter darling, why are you suddenly so quiet?’’ he exclaims after minutes of silence, still being completely engrossed in the millions of buttons, hinges, switches and random objects the console possesses. The girl looks up, her face being turned from sad to astonished to sad again to upset to quite noticeably angry in a matter of seconds.  
‘’Maybe I’m quiet because a psychotic madman in a blue box just kidnapped me!’’ she says while standing up, her fists clenched in anger.  
‘’I’m not psychotic, nor did I kidnap you.’’ He responds calmly.  
‘’Did you finish your tea yet, you wouldn’t want it to get cold, now do you?’’ he adds coyly, as if he is deliberately trying to annoy her.  
‘’You want tea, here’s your tea!’’ she responds angrily, throwing the cup of tea into the console, drenching the buttons, hinges, switches and random objects in hot liquid while the cup itself shatters against the central column.   
‘’Oh no, oh no, oh no!’’ the Doctor exclaims as he runs to the drenched part of his console, trying to dry off the console with rips of his jackets sleeve as the console makes rattling and cracking noised it definitely shouldn’t make.  
‘’What’s the bloody matter with you! You foolish human!’’ He shouts angrily.  
‘’I don’t go and throw tea around your bloody home now do I!’’

The girl just stands there startled by his reaction, before her previously apparent anger returns to her.  
‘’Well, if you wouldn’t have kidnapped me, I wouldn’t have thrown tea all over your computer.’’ The Doctor stops moving for a moment before he turns around and faces the girl, a completely understandable frustration appearing on his face.  
‘’First off, this is not a computer. This is a Tardis, which is short for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, which is something you bloody humans never seem to understand.’’  
He all utters these words while repeatedly pointing at the console, hoping the pointing will fix it somehow.  
‘’Second of all, I didn’t even kidnap you, I saved you when you almost fell headfirst into a dirt road.’’ A loud crack comes from the console and a spout of sparks spray from it, forcing the Doctor to turn around and wave around his hands frantically, hoping it’ll help. He turns around again, his eyes now filled with a distinct kind of fear.  
‘’And third of all, I think you might’ve preferred being kidnapped over this.’’  
The girl gives him a sceptic look, the anger slowly subsiding as she looks into the panicked mans’ eyes.  
‘’Which is?’’ she asked, suddenly genuinely interested in her well-being.  
‘’Crashing, we’re bloody crashing darling.’’ The Tardis shakes and wobbles and shimmies side to side as both the Doctor and the girl fall over, hitting the floor hard.  
‘’I hate crashing twice a day!’’ he exclaims loudly, pulling himself up using a lever. As sudden as the Tardis started shaking it stops shaking, the console lacking her distinctive noise and now filling the room with an eerie, awkward and flat-out frightening silence.  
They both stand up, the girl ignoring the Doctor as much as possible and folding her arms like she’s married to him and just found out his work related trips contained a lot, but no work at all.  
‘’Admittedly, this is one of the most comfortable crashes I’ve ever experienced.’’ The Doctor says, walking around the console and inspecting a number of digits.  
‘’Although you did ruin the polarity of the neutron flow, which tore a hole into the temporal circuits, so we might not be in the same year we left.’’ The girl turns around astonished.  
‘’What do you mean by that?’’ she asks angrily, her arms still crossed, a stern look on her face.  
‘’What do I mean by what?’’ he retorts, still toying with the console.  
‘’Nineteen-eighty-three!’’ he suddenly shouts, interrupting the girls ability to keep on asking.  
‘’The year of the Moonwalk, the Dodge Caravan and that one time I went to Amsterdam.’’   
The girl stares in disbelief as the Doctor keeps on rambling about 1983 and the string of irrelevant things that happened to him that year.  
‘’I don’t believe you.’’ The girl retorts with a hint of worry in her voice.  
‘’We sit it out until she repairs herself’’ the Doctor answers, walking back to the console to flick some random switches.  
Suddenly a hologram appears of a young and very attractive lady with long auburn hair dancing around her round and cute face.  
‘’PROTOCOL 17B ACTIVATED. EMERGENCY EVACUATION FOR REQUIRED SELF-REPAIR IN EFFECT. I URGE YOU TO LEAVE THE PREMISES WITHIN TEN SECONDS OR YOU WILL BE EVAPORATED.’’ The hologram starts counting down in a loud, aggressive voice unfitting for a hologram of such stature.  
‘’Always the feisty one eh Clara?’’ the Doctor says with a light smile on his face before he grabs the girls arm and violently throws her out of the Tardis before jumping out himself, the door shutting with a loud clang as they land in the grass, only three metres from where they first met. 

Before the Doctor even has a chance of standing up, the girl is already on her legs and running away from him.  
‘’Oh for crying out loud, could you bloody work with me just once!’’ he shouts after her mildly agitated. Looking around the Doctor spots a bloke on a bicycle, slowly trotting down the road.  
‘’Oi!’’ he shouts towards the bloke, running towards him while pulling out a blank piece of laminated paper from his ruffled jacket.  
‘’Police, I’m here to confiscate your bicycle’’ he states while presenting the bloke the blank piece of laminated paper.  
Before the bloke has a chance to answer the Doctor has already stepped on the bike, ringing the bell several times as to invoke a melody of some sorts.  
‘’Go and wait by that police box until I return’’ he states coldly before pedalling towards the dot in the distance that has to be the girl. The bloke quietly agrees while the Doctor keeps gaining speed, reducing the distance between him and the girl.   
He completely ignores his surroundings, the gentle sway of the wind, the buzzing of seventeen bees in the distance. He all ignores it until he hears a noise, a noise that sends fear and chills through every cell of his newly regenerated body.   
A whistle, an eerie whistle.


	6. The Wardrobe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor gets properly dressed and realises he needs help from an old friend.

She has turned her running into an angry way of walking as the stomps down the path, her arms crossed and her eyes forward, ignoring the blatantly annoying ringing of a bell behind her.  
‘’Would you stop walking!’’ she hears the Doctor say.  
‘’I forgot how to ride a bicycle!’’ he adds, just before she hears a crash and a boom of a falling bicycle and the frustrated grumbles of the Doctor.  
‘’We are all in grave danger!’’ he shouts while picking up the metal, two wheeled steed before he drops it and runs towards her. She turns around angry and looks at him with a furious look on her face.  
‘’In danger of a raging psychopath kidnapping people in his blue box!’’ she shouts angrily, the Doctor puffing and sighing as he tries to get closer to her, but just too tired to do so.  
‘’I’’ the Doctor says, his breath heavy from the brief cardio exercise he just involuntarily committed to,  
‘’am going to take a nap.’’ He continues before he falls over in the sand, his eyes shut and his body curled up like an overgrown toddler in clothes that don’t fit. The girl keeps staring at the sleeping Doctor for a few moments before she turns around and starts walking away from him again, her arms still crossed.  
Suddenly a white-blue flash appears in front of the girl and a man not much older than herself appears, big rimmed glasses are resting on his nose and a curly forest of hairs is on top of his head. The girl stands wide-eyed as a man suddenly appeared in front of her.  
‘’Hey Emily’’ he says awkwardly, his hands roaming over his pants as if he is searching for something in his pockets.  
‘’How do you know my name?’’ Emily replies, a certain fear obviously seeping in between her words.  
‘’That’s a long story.’’ He replies, his hands still rummaging through his pockets.  
‘’Well, not that long, but it involves time travel and aliens, so it’s more confusing than it is long.’’ He zips his coat open and dives his hand inside the inner pockets.  
‘’Ah, found it.’’ He says triumphantly as he pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket and holds it out towards Emily.   
‘’Take it’’ he says, a friendly smile on his face.  
‘’It’s for the Doctor’’ he adds as her fingers take the piece of paper from his hand.   
‘’You know that kooky guy?’’ she asks with a look that is only best described as a mixture between disgust and surprise on her face.   
‘’Yes, I suppose I do’’ he replies with a faint smile on his face.   
‘’Well, that’s it. I’ve got to go.’’ He says as his hands jab away at tiny buttons on his really big watch.  
‘’But wait’’ Emily says, clutching the piece of paper tightly.  
‘’Who are you?’’ she asks as the young man keeps mashing away at his big watch.  
‘’You’ll find out.’’ He replies, his eyes still focused on the watch.  
‘’I’ll be off, see you sooner.’’ He adds before he disappears with a beep and a flash of blue and white. 

Baffled, Emily keeps staring at the patch of sand where there was a young man not even a minute ago.   
‘’So you’re called Emily eh?’’ the Doctor says, his head peeking over her shoulder.  
Startled, Emily turns around and slaps him in the face. The Doctor falling to the floor again as a red mark appears on his face.  
‘’Where did you do that for!’’ he shouts while stroking his cheek, trying to soothe the pain.  
‘’Don’t sneak up on me.’’ She says.  
‘’Don’t touch me.’’ She adds.  
‘’and don’t even think about calling me sweetie, honey, darling, sweetheart or anything that even has the intention of flirting with me.’’ She concludes.   
The Doctor looks up at her confused.  
‘’and then?’’ he asks quizzically while slowly standing up.  
‘’I might be willing to help you, since I have no idea what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.’’ She folds her arms again as she taps her feet while the Doctor slowly regains his footing.  
‘’Reasonable terms, seeing as I don’t have a clue about what is going on either.’’ He cracks his back as he slowly starts to walk, taking a key out of his pocket as he does. He presses the key and in a matter of seconds they are back inside his Tardis. 

The Doctor looks startled as his eyes flutter about his loved console room, Emily looking even more confused than the Doctor himself. His once so beloved Victorian console room has transformed into a brown metalled behemoth, including sprockets and hinges and things all alike that dangle around it.   
‘’You’ve redecorated’’ the Doctor snarls at his console.  
‘’I like it’’ Emily says as her eyes wander about the room. The Doctor turns around his head as his eyes are big with discontent over the current state his beloved Tardis is in.  
‘’Well I don’t.’’ he retorts.   
‘’I don’t like redecorations, never did, never do, never will.’’ He says while quickly pacing through the room, looking for a door he fancies.  
‘’What are you doing?’’ Emily asks, curiously following the man with a coat a couple of sizes too small.  
‘’First things first, I need some new clothes.’’ He twists a doorknob and opens a door.  
‘’Can’t save the universe in these rags. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t like it as much.’’ He adds as he walks into a room filled with clothes you’ll never see anyone wear unless they’re extremely deluded or a time traveling alien. The Doctor scurries quickly around the room as Emily slowly walks in, her eyes feasting upon dozens of bow ties, an assortment of weird hats, a couple of very long scarves, a collection of suits in varying colours and sizes, an insane amount of velour clothing, one leather jacket and a single coat who must’ve been gifted by Janis Joplin.   
‘’A floppy curl!’’ the Doctor shouts as he observes himself in a mirror ‘’It has been ages since I had one of those!’’ he adds while looking at the details of his new face.  
‘’Ooh, and a nice chin, dimple and all. Very Travolta-ish. I like it’’ he says while stroking his face, trying on an assortment of weird faces to see how his new head responds.  
‘’Nose is quite big though, don’t like big noses. Big feet too, very big feet.’’ He says as he hops around on one leg, looking at one of his indeed very large feet.

Before Emily can respond to any of his antics the Doctor is already running around the largest walk-in wardrobe the universe has ever seen (and the envy of every single socialite in the known universe) and scooping up copious amounts of odd looking clothes, before he dashes into a tiny dressing room to get himself dressed, clothes flying out the door in a matter of seconds.  
‘’I should wear green, I like green. Green is a happy colour.’’ Emily hears the Doctor say from behind the red, velvet curtain of the dressing room.  
‘’How is green a happy colour?’’ Emily asks, a curious look on her face as she sees all non-green clothing fly over the top of the dressing room.  
His head peeks through the curtains as he looks to Emily with a quizzical look in his eyes.  
‘’How is it not, doesn’t green make you happy? Green makes me happy, it sure does.’’  
Before Emily can even try to respond the Doctors head is already back in the dressing room.  
A few moments later the Doctor jumps out, dressed in brown slacks, browner shoes, a white shirt, a completely unbuttoned waistcoat and to top it all off a very, very green fedora resting on his head.  
‘’What do you think?’’ he asks Emily, straightening his fedora as much as he can.  
‘’Lose the fedora.’’ She answers, already reaching towards the green monstrosity.   
The Doctor backs off, clutching the fedora that most people would describe as a crime towards fashion in his hands.   
‘’No, I like it. It’s my fedora. It makes me feel euphoric.’’ Without responding to the worst defence of a piece of clothing ever, Emily walks up to the Doctor and grasps the fedora from his head, throwing it far away and between a lot of other, irrelevant clothes, hoping it’ll never be found again.  
‘’Bloody humans and their fashion sense.’’ The Doctor mumbles before angrily stomping back into the dressing room.  
‘’This is the last time I’ll ask for your advice, you’re a bloody bad giver of advice and I don’t like it, not one bit.’’  
She keeps hearing the Doctor rummaging through copious amounts of clothes and she hears some clicks and the sliding of fabric before he steps out again, his waistcoat buttoned up, a dark green tie added and a hideous moss green, woollen coat.   
‘’Fancy this?’’ he asks Emily while observing himself in the mirror, pulling a copper-coloured pocket watch from his waistcoat.  
‘’I like pocket watches, the clicks they make, the chain they hang from and the fact that they accurately display time, always. At least this one does.’’ He slides his finger over the cover, with an almost reminiscing glare and a sadness in his eyes. He turns his head towards Emily.  
‘’Nostradamus made it for me, silly old man. Great watchmaker in his free time though.’’  
‘’You look like an old man.’’ Emily retorts, even if it was to shut the Doctor up about his love for pocket watches.  
‘’Oi!’’ the Doctor replies angrily.   
‘’I haven’t looked this young in ages and you are quite rude for a human! ’’ He scoffs as Emily wisely decides not to criticize the Doctors’ sense of fashion, or lack thereof, in at least the foreseeable future.   
‘’What do you mean in ages?’’ Emily asks while the Doctor walks towards the exit of the most magnificent wardrobe.  
‘’Long version or short version?’’ the Doctor responds, not even turning his head toward her as he keeps on walking.  
‘’Depends’’ says Emily as she follows him, ‘’Is the long version a grandmothers story-long or what did you do last week-long?’’  
The Doctor turns around, his finger raised in front of his face as he says one of his longest sentences ever.  
‘’Alien with at least twenty lives who has travelled the universe in a blue box that’s bigger on the inside and who encountered a lot of perilous foes along the way, including aliens with suckers and whisks for weapons who decided to destroy my planet, which I eventually prevented with my previous lives and whisked away to another universe although I don’t really quite remember if I found it again, since I just got a new face and body and it is all giddy and weird and I don’t even remember things like French, the breaststroke, an assortment of cooking skills and hopping, but nobody hops anyway-long.’’ 

Baffled Emily stares at the Doctor, who just blurted out a revelation that could shake the world at a baffling speed.   
‘’Come on, we don’t have all day’’ the Doctor replies with an almost alien calmness and he gestured Emily to come over to the console.  
‘’Did you hear the whistle?’’ he asks as he fidgets around with buttons, levers and something that looks like one of those old pick-up players everyone’s grandparents used to own.  
‘’What whistle?’’ Emily asks curiously, looking at the Doctors fingers flying over the console and touching everything within reach like a stark-raving mad OCD-patient.   
‘’The whistle, a weird whistle. Some sort of oo-wee-oo.’’ The Doctor stops moving his hands for a second, a disappointed look appearing on his face.  
‘’I forgot how to whistle.’’ He runs over to the other side of the console and looks up some intangible writings on a screen.  
‘’This is not good, this is not bloody good at all’’ he says between his teeth, his hands gripping at his hair. Before Emily can even attempt to scoot over to the Doctor to see where this kidnapping man is up to he starts talking again.  
‘’We need help.’’ He says, his fingers flicking over the buttons and levers as if they’re a piano and he’s very good at playing the piano.  
‘’Whose help do we need then?’’ Emily asks, her eyes showing a bit of panic as she sees the Doctor is getting more and more frustrated by the minute.  
‘’We need help from the only man who’s madder than I am’’ he says with a grin on his face as he pulls a lever, the Tardis shuttling and rattling and wobbling all over as they take off.


End file.
